Yesterday evening I had the pleasure of battling snow and
ice to get to Deloitte’s Luxembourg office out near the local airport. The
presentation was ably led by Paul Lee, Global Director of TMT Research, and the
man responsible for gathering the information that makes the predictions
possible (80% success rate in the last two years!). I won’t go into the detail
of how the predictions are sourced from Industry and then tested with in
consumer markets for adoption, you can find out more about that on their dedicated
internet site
Instead I’ll list some of his key predictions, and then riff
off them below:
Predictions
Bring your own computer- Very few additional companies will
adopt a policy.
Why? Because it relies on companies providing a voucher or
subsidy for the employee to buy a PC, hence this is very different to the BYOD
trend. That subsidy is a taxable benefit and so it increases costs to the
employer; as a result of these two factors only 5% of companies have a BYOC
policy. Additionally there is an emerging requirement for BYO IT, as technical support
is not easily provided to a range of non-standard operating systems and hardware.
But perhaps the most significant barrier (in my humble opinion) is privacy;
would you sign up to companies being able to delve into your personal files?
But what about VPN I hear you cry? Sadly bandwidth required for high quality
VPN is not universally available, and so this may erode the productivity gains
that have been forecast for flexible working.
The end of strong password security- The rise of
multi-factor authentication.
Why? You can now crack a complex password (e.g. H@rvard567!)
with equipment that can be bought for $10k. Also the hackers have moved towards
obtaining the master password files from organisations with the intention of
decrypting them. In fact Deloitte predict that more than 90% of “strong”
passwords are at risk, and a recent study has shown that use of the 10,000 most
popular passwords accounts for 98.1% of all in use. So how is this going to be
tackled? Multi-factor authentication (not two step as Google et al have been
introducing). Examples include a password sent to a register mobile, dongles,
biometric etc.
I appreciate the irony, as whilst I was writing this my Yahoo!
Account was hacked from Japan, Russia and Romania, and spam sent out to my
contacts…. Apologies all!
Over 1 billion smartphones will be shipped this year.
This was interesting purely from a stat and usage
perspective. There is a lot of buzz in industry at the moment about going
mobile, and the increasing focus on producing mobile compatible interfaces. I’ll
admit I struggle with practical application of some stuff in a mobile device; I
personally feel more comfortable viewing emails on a tablet, but tend to
respond to them on a Laptop… Anyway couple of key things Paul said about
mobile;
- There will be 1.9 billion smartphones in use by the end of 2013
- 20% of those users may never (or less than once a week) connect their device to the internet through wifi or cellular network.
- Hundreds of millions of users won’t have a data package!
- 400 million smartphones’ usage will resemble that of a feature phone (makes calls, texts etc)
This is partly because of high charges for roaming and data
usage (see next segment) but is also due to smartphones being handed down (or
up, I’m not quite sure) to the older generation; effectively Grandparents will
be given the gift of smartphones once their children or grandkids get bored of theirs.
As an aside Paul pointed out that they will be used like feature phones also
because…. No one is making feature phones anymore!
All you can app (AYCA)
Is a fixed monthly subscription to replace data plans and
download limits. Put simply most punters (or consumers) can’t tell the
difference (file size wise) between a 30 sec clip of video, music, or web
browsing, and thus metered billing is toast! As once they realise how expensive
it is to watch live sport (cost price is $10 per GB, but billed to consumers at
less than $5 per unit) the market for it will evaporate! So the solution
appears to be AYCA; typically bundling social networks together (a bit like
cable TV does with channels) and movie services and/or spotify (or other music
service providers) for a monthly fee. This is expected to be popular in local
income economies with India’s Reliance telecom taking a lead. One of the most
interesting case studies is that of Globe Telecom’s (Phillipines) partnership
with Google; providing free access to Google services (search, Gmail etc) and
the websites navigated too from a Google search… hmmm.
Enterprise Social Networks
This really piqued my interest, mainly (full disclosure)
because OpenText has just launched its own ESN internally with the intention of
delivering it to the Enterprise. Bullet point observations:
- 90% of Fortune 500’s will have at least partially implemented an ESN
- Only 1/3 of users will read content once a week
- With only 40% posting at least once a month
- We’ve had intranets since the early nineties, and yet they have hardly garnered high usage stats
- On a related note the ratio of TV watching (western Europe) vs. times spent on Social networks is still 40:1
Reasons for these startling numbers are varied; time obviously
ranks fairly high, struggling to keep up with another social network feed, and
not knowing how to use it…. Hang on what?
Well as crazy as it may seem that last point is key. I’ve
been in two companies that have launched ESN’s and both times they’ve suffered
from the “why?” question. In a bank I worked in they launched an ESN to
encourage collaboration; this really struggled early on as the majority of
staff in a bank don’t need to collaborate, they need to follow policy and procedure
(note: collaboration is what got the LIBOR traders into trouble… although I appreciate
the tenuous cause and effect). Those that do need to collaborate… already do.
They’ve not been sitting around scratching their heads wondering why their global
project is struggling to get off the ground; they’ve probably been using email
and voice conferencing.
There is also the Facebook LinkedIn paradox (not sure if
that is the right term), is the ESN for sharing pictures of cats and weekend
plans? Or is it to make connections and share business data or business value
adding content? In both ESN implementations the answer to that question has
been left up to the wisdom of crowds…. With predictable results; The bank ESN
felt like entering a dangerous world where a wrong comment or observation could
be met with swift retribution from HR, the opposite is true in software (600
communities? How can I navigate that!) where pretty much anything goes.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against ESNs. I think they are
an evolving force for good. However as Deloitte point out, employees could do
with a guide, there should be some loose principles, and it should be aligned
if not embedded with existing business processes. If these things don’t happen
then over time the tool will wither and die.
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